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I have been debating for awhile which format is the best for me to share my ideas and thoughts with the world, and while I love WordPress and will continue to use it for other projects, for the purpose of this blog, which is basically mental diarrhea, I feel like Tumblr is a better option for me. You can continue to follow me at http://awomynous.tumblr.com/. I hope you will make the leap with me.

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A pair of Magellanic penguins have remained faithful to each other for 16 years, according to researchers who have been monitoring the birds and have shown they can travel up to 10,000 miles a year in their search for food and love.

It is a story of epic journeys and enduring love.

A pair of Magellanic penguins has been revealed as among the most faithful of couples in the animal kingdom.

Their relationship has spanned 16 years – almost their entire breeding life – despite spending long periods apart and each of them taking solo trips totalling 200,000 miles.

Yet each year they have returned to the same nest, and each other, to produce a new brood of chicks.

Now they have grown old together – the penguin’s natural lifespan means they normally die around 20 years after they start breeding.

Biologists have expressed surprise at the endurance of the couple’s relationship as most pairings are cut short by either the death of one of the penguins during their long sea journeys or a failure to successfully produce chicks, which are often killed by predators or hunger.

Research has revealed a tragic twist to Magellanic penguin relationships – if a couple ever fails to successfully hatch their chicks then they will “divorce”, leaving each other to find new partners.

The longest relationships between penguins previously seen by researchers have been between five and ten years before tragedy strikes and they fail to breed successfully.

The tale, which would rival any romantic novel, has emerged as part of a 30-year study of Magellanic penguins, one of the most abundant but poorly-understood flightless birds on the planet.

They spend their summer breeding season on the Patagonian coastline of southern Argentina, where researchers put metal identity bands on the flippers of 50,000 birds to follow their progress.

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I definitely fall into the category of women overachieving on Maternity Leave, well, mostly. This article argues it’s a bad thing:

“Women get stuck in a cycle of fear where they can’t see all the other things that are important in life,” says Shari Goldsmith, a life coach and mental health therapist. “It’s often difficult to be a woman in a workplace, and some fears related to falling behind may be valid.”

But there’s also a difference between a natural-born entrepreneur who just happens to have a newborn and someone who’s having a hard time transitioning from her 24/7 attachment to her Blackberry. Or worrying that being away for that amount of time could cause her to fall behind on the job.

“The reality is that women notice and respond to those subtle societal pressures to be better, stronger and smarter, and they make choices accordingly,” says mom of two Samantha Krigsvold. “As a professional woman, breadwinner and mother of two young children, my choice to take an abbreviated maternity leave was absolutely tied to an underlying pressure to prove I could handle it all.”

The experts agree: “Women hear over and over again the message that they’re supposed to be able to manage it all—a career and a family. When it comes to taking maternity leave, there are very real fears of being seen as uncompetitive or dispensable,” says Ford Myers, a career coach and author of “Get the Job You Want, Even When No One’s Hiring.”

Then again, for many women, wanting to go back to work at all, let alone double down on it during their downtime, just doesn’t compute.

I argue women do this for a multitude of reasons, but primarily because…

a) finances – maternity leave isn’t always covered very well, and babies cost money!
b) isolation and boredom – being on maternity leave or being a stay at home mom can be incredibly isolating.
c) sense of need to contribute to society – despite or because of cultural pressure, women feel the need to do more than "be a mom."

The article also touches on some of these points, but for a financial site they don’t really acknowledge the cost issues.

Some people will take sabbaticals from work to work on other projects. I’ve known a few people who started projects while sick in bed that turned into enterprises.

What do you think about working on any kind of leave, maternity or otherwise?